Strangers in Death (In Death #26)(85)

“Stun me.”

“It probably won’t stun you that Angel wasn’t, and isn’t, Ava’s biggest fan. Cold, snobbish, self-righteous—and those were the compliments. And she said she thought things were a little chilly between Ava and the old man that weekend.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t know. Her ‘big white bear’ as she called him never talked business with her, and never gossiped about family. He didn’t care for it when she complained about Ava’s attitude toward her, so she kept it to herself. But she noticed they weren’t all chummy, as usual. Didn’t have coffee together by the pool that morning, and that was a habit of theirs. She suspected they’d had a little spat, but since she didn’t know, kept that to herself, too.”

“Write it up, log it in. I may have a line to tug on that. Later.”

The trip down to Spring, an exercise in tedium on the best days, became a pitched battle due to an overturned glide-cart and the stalled Rapid Cab that had crashed into its grill. Even from ten cars back, Eve could see it would only get worse as the cab driver and the cart operator were currently beating the snot out of each other.

Eve called it in, snapping out an order for a black-and-white or patrol droids. Pissed, she slammed out of her vehicle, whipping out her badge as she strode forward. Mostly, she noted, the two men were just rolling around on raw soy fries and dogs, bapping each other on the back.

“Break it up! NYPSD, and I said break it up.” She gave both of their shins a sharp rap with her boot. “Break it up or I’m hauling you both in. And as God is my witness, if any piece of either one of you makes contact with any piece of me, you’re serving the full pop on assaulting an officer.”

Both men lifted bloodied faces to hers, and began to shout complaints and accusations.

“Zip it! And you people! Go and find something else to do. Show’s over here. You, cab guy, what’s your story?”

“I’m cruising for a fare.” His voice was musical, a tropical island song that contrasted sharply with the bleeding mouth and swollen eye. “Guy’s hailing half a block down, and I gonna pick him up. And this one, this one, he shoves the cart out in the street. In front of me!”

“Fuck I did! Why’d I wanna do that? Wreck my cart thataway?”

“’Cause you crazy, man!”

Eve pointed at Cab Guy to shut him down.

“Your cart’s in the street, pal.” A scrapper, Eve noted, about half the size of Cab Guy, with New York as pugnacious in his tone and attitude as his bloody nose.

“Yeah, it’s in the ever-f*cking street, but I didn’t shove it there. Goddamn kids did. Damn kids, they come along, and one’s ordering a dog and fries so I’m on him, you know? And another one of ’em musta flipped off my brakes. Next I know the bunch of ’em are shoving my cart off the corner. Laughing like hyenas. Look what they done to my cart.” He spread his arms wide as blood dribbled out of his nose. “What they want to do that for? I’m just trying to make a living here.”

“Can you ID them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Look at my cart, wouldja? Look at my stuff.”

“I see these boys!” Cab Guy waved a hand in the air. “I see them go flying across the street. Airboards.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Cart Guy bobbed his head. “They had airboards. Couple of them riding tandem. I didn’t see which way they went. I was trying to grab the cart, get to the brake, but the cab…” He shoved back his hair. “Man. Sorry about your cab.”

“Not your fault. I see the kids. I can help identify.” Cab Guy offered a unifying smile with bloodied teeth. “Sorry about your cart, man.”

Eve turned the situation over to a black-and-white and a couple of beat droids. Cab and Cart Guy were now enjoying solidarity. They’d be neighborhood kids, she assumed. And they’d likely roll another cart or two before the day was done. But damned if she was going to help track them down.

She was ten minutes over the hour already.

It came to a total of twenty minutes behind before she could park, flip her On Duty, and hit the sidewalk. She’d already seen him—her expert consultant, her superior lay. He leaned against the wall of the graffiti-scrawled, post–Urban War rattrap that held Bang She Bang, wearing a dark suit with the thinnest of pinstripes with a spring-weight overcoat billowing a bit as he worked on his handheld.

His wrist unit was likely worth more than the building against which he braced. In this neighborhood with its funky junkies, chemi-heads, grifters, shifters, and spine crackers, a man’s life was at risk for his shoes. From her vantage point, she saw what Tiko would’ve called a suspicious character swagger in Roarke’s direction, his hand in his pocket and his fingers very likely closed over a sticker.

Roarke simply flicked his gaze up, over, locked them on. And suspicious character kept on swaggering by.

“You.” Eve jabbed a finger at one of the grunts loitering in a doorway.

“Fuck you,” he called back, and added his middle finger in case English wasn’t her first language.

Eve flipped out her badge as she crossed the sidewalk. The badge itself didn’t mean much here. It was all about what she put behind it. “That’s Lieutenant, as in: Fuck you, Lieutenant.”

Beside the grunt, his gap-toothed companion sniggered.